Report: Texts coached girl
 Agency: She was told to 'cry, pout'
 
By Paul A. Anthony
San Angelo Standard-Times
 
A 14-year-old girl alleged to be a wife of Warren Jeffs received text messages while in foster care telling her to "please stay angry" and to "keep crying, pout, sleep in," according to a court-appointed guardians' report obtained by the Standard-Times.

The report, filed last week in the 51st District Court by San Angelo-based Court-Appointed Special Advocates, describes a series of text messages sent to the girl between Jan. 15 and Jan. 21 from a contact labeled as "POP."

The girl's attorney, Valerie Trevino, recommends in the report that 51st District Judge Barbara Walther halt visitation between the girl and her mother, Barbara Jessop, except when monitored by a therapist. It also recommends barring all phone communication between the two. "CASA is shocked that Mrs. Jessop would place her daughter again in a situation where she would be forced to sneak around to communicate," the report states. "The text messages telling (the girl) how to behave are disturbing."

Brett H. Pritchard, the Killeen-based attorney for Jessop, declined to comment on the report. A hearing on whether to seal the report is scheduled for Friday, and a court administrator said it remains under temporary seal until the hearing.

"Come to the hearing on Friday, and you'll hear all my problems with it," Pritchard said.

The girl's court-appointed attorney, Carmen Symes Dusek, of San Angelo, declined to comment.

Child Protective Services investigators allege the girl was married at age 12 to Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in a 2006 ceremony at the sect's YFZ Ranch in Schleicher County.

The ranch was the focus of a weeklong raid in early April that led to the removal and subsequent return of 439 children in the nation's largest child-custody case.

The girl was returned to state custody in August on the strength of evidence that included the sect's own documents and photos showing Jeffs kissing the girl deeply soon after their alleged wedding.

According to the report, the girl secretly obtained the phone from her mother and, after finding it, CPS went through it "to determine who she had been talking to and the content of the text messages."

The report says the girl told CPS her mother told her to take the phone, after which the girl received at least 36 text messages.

The report does not include a transcript of the messages, but describes several "incoming text messages telling (the girl), 'Please stay angry,' 'We need you to keep crying, pout, sleep in,' 'Crying will get you what you want,' 'CPS needs to see that you are miserable there.'"

Although the phone also contained 88 outgoing messages - many to a contact named "Mother," according to the report - the cited incoming messages came from a contact named "POP."

"Having (the girl) take responsibility for the cell phone shows a serious disregard for her," the report states, "and it places her in a terrible position of having to lie repeatedly, especially to her foster family with whom she's developed a close relationship."

The report is the latest in a series of struggles CPS and CASA have reported in their efforts to ensure compliance with court-ordered restrictions on visitation and telephone contact between the girl and sect members beyond her mother and siblings.

It notes the text messages were particularly harmful because they encouraged the girl to lie even though an "aspect of the FLDS culture is to be truthful and honest," the report states, citing the girl's therapist.

"The members of (her) community that are encouraging her to lie and be deceitful," the report states, "are causing confusion for" the girl.

Upon being confronted by CASA workers about the phone, the report states, the girl said she "did not 'want to cause trouble or anything,' and that she knew that what she was doing was wrong."

According to the report, the girl also had called her attorney - presumably Dusek - on a land line from her foster family's house, then hung up and called her mother instead.

Dusek has since asked to be removed from the case, though her motion for withdrawal does not indicate why, beyond "for good cause" and "professional considerations." A hearing on Dusek's motion also is scheduled for Friday.
 
gosanangelo.com
Originally published February 4, 2009
 
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